Mobile networking has evolved to an extent that a mobile router can communicate with other nodes (e.g., “correspondent nodes”) based on registering with a home agent specifying that an assigned home address for the mobile router is reachable via a specified care-of address, described in detail in RFC 3775 and RFC 3963. In addition, a “home network” can be extended into an “extended home network” based on an aggregation of one or more home networks and mobile networks, as described in the Internet Draft by Ernst, “Network Mobility Support Terminology”, draft-ietf-nemo-terminology-04 (Oct. 24, 2005) and the Internet Draft by Thubert, “NEMO Home Network Models” draft-ietf-nemo-home-network-models-06 (Feb. 17, 2006).
Unfortunately, the requirements of RFC 3963 require a large number of tunnels to be generated by a home agent, including a bidirectional tunnel established between the mobile router and the home agent, where all network traffic to and from the mobile network (using the mobile router as a point of attachment) must be passed via the bidirectional tunnel. Further, RFC 3963 requires an authorization method for an explicit mode for binding updates that is difficult to implement because it requires that both a home agent and a mobile router be configured to ensure the mobile router uses the proper home address for assigned mobile network prefixes; additional authentication protocols for binding updates are required under RFC 3775. Consequently, substantial processing burdens are imposed on the network device executing the home agent resource, including maintaining the multiple tunnel states for each of the registered mobile routers.